


Ask

by DianaSolaris



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Sheithlentines 2018, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 02:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13672779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DianaSolaris/pseuds/DianaSolaris
Summary: Not all love is about grand gestures or flowers or smiling in framed photographs. In fact, in Keith’s experience, it rarely is. Love, instead, is about commitment – the slow, dawning realization that he’s started letting Shiro leave the house and only briefly wondering if it’s the last time. Love is about Shiro’s kisses to the bruise on his shoulder, on his collarbones, on the bloodstain just under his lip.





	Ask

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shirosquared](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirosquared/gifts).



Life is strange, Keith thinks, washing the blood off his knuckles in the kitchen sink at three in the morning. He gets hurt more these days than he did fighting for the freedom of the universe; there’s fewer laser shots to the stomach, but he’s broken his fingers and nose more times in the last year than he remembers ever doing in the years in space.

He drops the washcloth, wincing as he flexes his fingers. He doesn’t regret it. He might regret a little doing it with a closed fist.

“More fights?” comes the quiet voice from the door. Some days Shiro is amused that Keith can’t seem to keep his mouth shut or his anger down, or keep himself away from places where he knows things will go south. Other days he gets frustrated. Today, he sounds sad and tired.

Keith doesn’t respond, and rubs his thumb over his bruised, split knuckles, spreading the cold water over them. Shiro’s footsteps echo on the tile, and then his arms wrap around Keith’s hips, almost-possessive, filled with a quiet fear of loss that rings through the skin-on-skin contact with the clarity of speech and mud and water.

“You should stop looking for it,” he murmurs.

Keith isn’t sure how. He’s too used to it. Swords don’t know how to stop cutting; they need somebody to wield them, and somebody to sheathe them, and somebody to blunt them when they get too sharp.

But he leans back against Shiro’s warmth anyway, and closes his eyes, and smiles and lets the touch soak into his bones.

—

Not all love is about grand gestures or flowers or smiling in framed photographs. In fact, in Keith’s experience, it rarely is. Love, instead, is about commitment – the slow, dawning realization that he’s started letting Shiro leave the house and only briefly wondering if it’s the last time. Love is about Shiro’s kisses to the bruise on his shoulder, on his collarbones, on the bloodstain just under his lip.

The first time Keith gets into a fight outside of Voltron, it’s when they’re drinking to the one-year anniversary of Zarkon’s death. They try to make it a cheery affair, and in many ways it is – Lance and Allura are taking turns sitting on Hunk’s lap and taking shots, Coran is chatting up the bartender, Pidge is examining a row of cocktails and sampling each of them –

  
Shiro sits quietly in the corner. Keith knows the black hole is yawning under his feet; it’s under Keith’s too, a distracting void that keeps following them around. Zarkon’s still falling, falling into the endless event horizon.

Somebody approaches Shiro, waves a hand in front of him. “Hey.”

Shiro doesn’t respond. A chill runs down Keith’s spine; it’s been a long time since Shiro’s been this bad and it makes  _sense_ but if this guy won’t back off –

“Anybody in th-“

Keith inserts himself between the trucker and Shiro, eyes glinting with defiance. “Leave him alone.”

Technically, it’s the other guy who starts it. But Keith ends it. Any way he knows how.

—

This time, Shiro is slow and methodical with how he bandages Keith’s injuries; none of them are bad, but the first time Keith got glass in his arms, Shiro panicked while taking it out and it just bled more. He knows how to ease it out now, how to test the cut.

 

 “Somebody-“

“Needed help, yes, I know. They always do.”

Keith chews on the inside of his cheek. Then – “Are you mad at me?”

Shiro pauses, then chuckles, pressing his jaw to Keith’s, half a kiss, more of a touch. “I can’t be mad at you for trying to save people. Just-“ He sighs, and there comes that grasp on his arm again. “Come back to me.”

“I promise.”

Love is commitment.

— 

Not all of life is about fighting and dying and war, Keith is starting to learn. The third night in a row he comes home with no new bruises, Shiro raises an eyebrow and finishes making him dinner with a little smile of contentment.

“You look happy,” Keith comments.

“You look decidedly unbruised.”

“Maybe I figured out how to defuse situations without punching anybody.” And it’s true. Keith still found himself in the middle but instead of locking eyes with the man trying to intimidate some poor girl home with him, he tut-tutted at the poor girl about how she was late for the party and got her outside and into a taxi. No bruises. No fighting. No broken glass.

Shiro looks at him softly, then chuckles, ladling a spoonful of sour cream on top of the bowl of chili. He’s learned how to cook, in the two years since they’ve come down to earth, and right now Keith feels like they’ve managed to build some variant of their own small world, spinning on a tilted, slightly shaky axis, foundation a little insecure but ultimately holding strong –

“I didn’t ask you to stop, you know,” Shiro says carefully.

“But you’re happy I did.”

“But I’m happy you’re going a little easier on yourself, yes –“ Shiro turns around, and then Keith has him pinned to the counter, the cast splinting two of his fingers brushing over exposed skin at Shiro’s hip under his too-short shirt, the calluses on his other hand creeping over the small of his back, his lip splitting again and leaving a small bloom of blood on Shiro’s lower lip.

“You’re allowed to ask me for things, you know,” he whispers.

“I know,” Shiro says with a smile, but it’s not entirely convincing. Keith leans in, brushing his nose over Shiro’s, touching the points together –

“Ask me to kiss you some more.”

“Please,” Shiro says with a small, embarrassed smile. Keith comes a little closer until they’re breathing the same air.

“Ask me  _properly_ ,” he says, and he feels the little shiver go up Shiro’s arm at that, hairs standing on end.

“Will you please kiss me?” Shiro replies, and his voice is so tender, it’s almost a mewl.

Keith waits, tracing his fingers over Shiro’s lips and memorizing the contours. That’s the one habit he can’t shake; the feeling that one day, he’ll need to know; that if he’s not careful, the memory will fade and the physical reminder will be gone and he’ll have nothing left.

He pushes his lips against Shiro’s until he can fill himself up with life and breath. He’s  _here._ Here and now. They lived. They survived. They are here. And he’s starting to believe it.

—- 

This time, it’s bad – he knows it’s bad. He can’t move his arm. And he knows why he can’t move it – it’s because when he got it trapped between barstool and bar, the weight of an angry, scrapping methhead between him and his way out, it crunched with a sound like salt under his feet.

 

It hasn’t started hurting yet. But his chest is tight and wound with panic, and he almost drops his phone, fumbling with the number. He almost forgets Shiro’s phone number. How stupid is that? The most important ten digits in the world and he almost forgets them, losing them in the panicked heartbeat rushing through his head.

The phone rings, rings again, and he finds himself pressed with his back to the storefront, trying to keep himself held together even while the tears prickle at his eyes. “Shiro?”

“ _…Keith? Keith, what’s wrong?_ ”

The tears come then. And Keith hates crying, he  _hates_ it, he hates how it burns his eyes and makes his nose run and screws up his face into a little knot. But this time, it’s a little satisfying as well. “I don’t want to fight anymore,” he whimpers, feeling like he’s five again and waiting outside the principal’s office, or holding his suitcase and waiting for a new family. “Can I stop now?” he asks, desperate for permission. He’s all blunted at the edges, rusted and weary and dull.

Shiro doesn’t question. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t get angry, although Keith can hear the edge of concealed worry in his sigh. “Of course.”

Keith’s breath leaves him all at once. He’s still crying, but it’s quiet now, dew on his cheeks shimmering in the nightlights. “Thank you,” he whispers, barely audible.

“Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

Keith gives his address by the landmarks and street signs he can see. A few moments later, he hangs up and stares up at the cloud-filled sky, at the stars struggling to shine, giving off bursts of light before vanishing behind another cloudbank or moonshadow.

Shiro shows up not long after, and he kneels down by Keith. He wipes his thumb over his cheeks, brushing away the tears that have dried in salty trails there. “…Let me take a look.”

Numbly, Keith offers up his arm. He feels pretty stupid; it isn’t as numb as it was, just covered with a tingling that blocks out everything else. But he watches Shiro test it anyway, too burnt out to say anything.

“It’s not broken,” Shiro murmurs. “Don’t worry.”

“Thank god,” leaves his lips. Then Shiro’s arms circle his waist, pulling him to his feet, and Keith buries his head in his lover’s chest, trying to make the trapped feeling go away. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” Shiro murmurs. “It just takes time.”

The black hole yawns underneath them. Event horizon. How can you stare into the empty heart of space and condemn somebody to it and not have it follow you around forever?

Something pushes into his ear and Keith startles a little before realizing it’s an earbud. “Oh,” he whispers, and then the music starts playing, and Shiro guides him into the circle of light under the lanterns –

“Okay, now you’re just being strange.”

“Shush and let me love you.” Shiro pulls Keith close by his waist, laces their fingers together with his other hand, and starts to sway to the quiet, somewhat tinny music. Keith closes his eyes to listen.

> “…you’re all here for the very same reason  
>  Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable  
>  And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table  
>  No one can find the rewind button girl,  
>  So cradle your head in your hands –“

Keith starts to move his feet properly. He knows the rhythm of this. He doesn’t remember where he learned how to dance, but it’s coming back, just enough.

> “And breathe, just breathe…”

So he does.

—

Love is strange, thinks Keith, curled naked into Shiro’s chest and tracing the surgery lines that underlie the network of other scars. Everything is  _changing_ about the two of them. Shiro transitioned. Shiro went through hell. Shiro came back. Shiro’s still here.

 

And Keith – Keith can’t seem to get a hold on who he is, day by day.  _Ask me,_ he keeps wanting to demand of the people around him.  _Ask me who I am. Tell me. Then maybe I’ll figure it out._

But he’s here.

 

And that’s enough.


End file.
